Are You Stuck in a Negative Practice Cycle?

Consistent and quality practice is THE number one thing you need to do in order to reach your full musical potential and achieve your artistic goals.

How you approach practice, the way you motivate yourself to show up, the way you talk to yourself while you’re practicing and what you actually do or don’t do whilepracticing – all these things directly impact your SUCCESS in singing.

But any musician worth their salt knows what it’s like to be stuck in a negativepractice cycle, which includes:

Judgment – you get caught up in a self-created web of judgment and negativity while you’re practicing by telling yourself things like: “you’ll never be good enough,” “you shouldn’t be singing this piece,” “they aren’t going to hire you anyway,” “this piece is too hard,” “it is very uncomfortable to sing in this range,” “I’ll never be able to memorize this piece” and so and so forth.

Confusion – you wonder what repertoire or music you should be practicing, how you should be practicing, you doubt whether you are doing it “right,” and if your efforts are helping or hurting.

Boredom – you are bored stiff with your familiar ways of warming-up and practicing, uninspired with the current music you’re singing, at an impasse from dealing with the same old recurring physical tension issues over and over, and generally unmotivated to practice.

Since we are WHOLE beings, these negative feelings create physical tension, further fueling the fire.

But this is just one part of the cycle.

Because human beings tend to avoid negative feelings like these, it leads to:

Resistance – your inner child throws a fit and screams, “But I don’t wannna practice!!” In order to silence the screaming little monster, you give in and let the little brat have its way. The practice does not get done.

Avoidance – you avoid practicing because you want to avoid the self-made anguish of the whole experience. Doing anything BUT practicing looks pretty sexy in comparison: cutting your nails, doing the dishes, brushing your hair, or even cleaning the bathroom!

Procrastination – the only way you know how to motivate yourself is through the self-created pressure of an upcoming performance, which you put off until the last minute. Because you’re always practicing “under the gun” you are good at “preparing” the music but aren’t really growing as a musician or building any new skills.

And then finally, there’s the inevitable feelings of…

G-U-I-L-T.

How many times have you said to yourself in the past 6 months, “I should be practicing now” or “I wish I practiced more.”

But honestly, can you really blame yourself for not practicing more when your experience is so negative?!

As a solution to this negative cycle, you might think that what you need is more discipline, willpower or accountability.

But the problem with these things is they are all about essentially making yourself to do something that you don’t WANT to do.

Though this can work in the short-term, it’s not a long-term sustainable solution.

The problem with the negativepractice cycle is that it comes from FEAR – fear that you aren’t enough, that you’ll never measure up and fear of what people will think of you.